Package delivery companies pick up millions of packages daily from thousands of locations over a large geographical area and transport them to sorting facilities, primarily by truck and airplane, so they can be routed to a correspondingly large number of scattered destinations. To meet a rigorous schedule and provide accurate deliveries, a package delivery company must use automated transfer systems in the sorting facilities to match incoming packages with proper outgoing transport headed for the packages' destinations. Because deliveries are time sensitive, the sorting equipment must be very fast, yet provide gentle and accurate handling of packages.
Belt and roller conveyor systems have often been used in package sorting systems to move packages from incoming loading docks to outgoing transport. Sorting of packages traveling along a conveyor may be accomplished by diverting packages from the conveyor based on their destinations, or based on their size or another characteristic. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,104,755; 4,711,357; 4,295,559; and 5,400,895 each disclose sorting assemblies that include a horizontal conveyor with a diverter that moves in close proximity to and across the surface of the conveyor to divert articles off of the conveyor toward their destinations. In some cases the diverter is simply an elongate paddle. In other cases the diverter is elongate, pivots across the surface of the conveyor, and includes an endless belt driven about pulleys whose axes extend perpendicularly from the conveyor.
Many sorter assemblies can directly receive incoming articles from only one or two upstream sources and can sort directly to only two or three downstream destinations. As a result, numerous sorters are often employed in a single conveyor system or at a single sorting facility, which increases the cost and complexity of the conveyor systems and sorting facilities.
Additionally, many of the sorter assemblies that are currently used by package delivery companies have difficulty sorting certain bulky articles, such as large car tail pipes, bags, tires, ladders, and other large or heavy articles. As a result, many of these types of articles have to be sorted manually. Manual sorting can be much more expensive and time consuming than sorting articles with automated sorters, especially when the articles are heavy.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a sorting assembly that possesses greater flexibility in the number of upstream sources from which it can directly receive articles and the number of downstream destinations to which it can directly sort articles, and that possess greater flexibility with respect to the articles, such as bulky articles, that it is capable of sorting.